Adventure Oddities #2

So you might have wondered what this tube on the back of everyone’s kayak are.. well this goes back to the Leave No Trace subject. Earlier I mentioned that in the backcountry you dig a hole for your “ahem”. On the river a hole is not possible because there really is no way to say where high water is so if your hole is below high water mark in the spring when high water comes your ‘ahem’ will be washed down the river and is now contaminating the river… thus you pack it out. Well when you are on a 7 day trip you don’t really want your ‘ahem’ bag of goodness in your dry bag so that is why we have the tube. Just because I know the next question is always you go ‘ahem’ in the tube?!!!! No!!! just like the shovel... cleanliness is next to godliness. The tube should NEVER be contaminated with said ‘ahem objects’. How it works is you are provided with a ‘landing pad’ this most often is a paper towel. When you are done with your business you pick up the four corners of the landing pad and what ever toilet paper you might have used and you put it in the blue plastic bag. You also get to add a little “Mr. Sprinkles” (everything has a name at YD) Mr. Sprinkles is poo powder (yes that is its actual name) but it is the chemical that is found in diapers that gels the ‘business’ thus making it so when we empty the poo tubes we can dump them straight into the dumpster and it is no longer considered hazardous material. Though I must say after 7 days in the hot sun in a sealed pipe the smell is QUITE Hazardous. So to continue the how to (just in case you ever need to use this method) you pick up your landing pad and deposit it in the blue bag add some Mr. Sprinkles then you drop the bag into your pipe and seal the lid. If you need to go # 1 it is a little different on the river instead of peeing on a rock you pee directly in the river… if you were to pee on the beach that is just going to attract animals and make the beaches gross for others who will be coming after you.